


Moats Boats Waterfalls

by samescenes



Category: Underworld (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Multi, Post-Underworld: Evolution, Threesome - F/F/M, everyone smiles at least once and it's great, it's only brief but please let someone in this fandom be happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2019-04-01 10:52:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13996728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samescenes/pseuds/samescenes
Summary: Michael and Selene go home.





	Moats Boats Waterfalls

**Author's Note:**

> Blood Wars? I don't know her.

It’s an ordinary day when Michael says, “Let’s go home.”

Selene looks up from the fire; a rare luxury, but one they’ve afforded themselves. They’re so far from civilisation Selene can hear a deer from miles away. 

“Even if we wanted to, I don’t think they’d let us,” she says. Michael is sitting opposite her, on the other side of the flames, poking the cinders with a stick. A log collapses with a pop, and the sparks cast shadows on Michael’s face. For a split second, he’s emaciated, grimmer than any Death Dealer Selene’s ever known. But then the fire settles, and Michael’s boyish lines reemerge. He meets her eyes, finally.

“No, to the States,” Michael says.

Selene blinks.

“The Continent,” he explains, like Selene doesn’t fucking know.

She is completely lost for words.

“Maybe put some distance between us and the Eastern coverns,” Michael presses. “And it’s starting to get warmer there now. It might be nice.”

Selene can feel one corner of her mouth tick up. “I forget you’re warm-blooded, still.”

Michael huffs. His breath billows out in front of him, as if to make his point.

“I’ve never been there,” she says. “I guess I’ve never even thought about it.”

“Really,” Michael says, drawing out the vowels in his surprise. It’s only when she remembers to take note that she can hear how American he is. She never even asked him how he came to be working in a hospital in the Old Land. “Never, in six hundred years?”

She regrets telling him how old she is. Every time he says it out loud, she feels every one of those centuries. 

“I’ve only been west once, many years ago. To Paris.” She can see Michael mouth ‘Paris?’, his eyebrows raised, mouth unhinged. “I had recently forged a reputation for myself, and the Council there had asked for my help. Vampires are quite territorial, you see. We are not encouraged to travel unless invited.”

Michael seems torn between disbelief and incredulousness.

“Hoop skirts were still in fashion,” Selene says. He laughs, finally, and Selene’s belly feels warm.

“Your accent is English, though,” he says.

“Is it?” Selene says. She shrugs. She doesn’t remember much of her childhood, just flashes of laughter, but she’s pretty sure she didn’t speak the common tongue until after she was turned. “Maybe that’s where Viktor is from. We were not encouraged to educate ourselves. We were told everything we needed to know. I never questioned it.”

“Until now,” Michael says.

Selene nods, and looks up. Here, the sun is grey even in the middle of the day. She can see why Michael wants to escape the dead winter. They might even have wandered into Russia, by this point. 

“I think I might get some sleep,” Michael says, looking up as well, seeing how late it’s gotten. He’ll always be the one to suggest rest. Selene will keep going until she drops - they travel during the night, and during the day, Selene drinks in the sun, zealous and greedy, anemic though it is.

Selene nods again. She unrolls her pallet next to the fire, and after some consideration, unstraps her guns, unlaces her corset, and takes off her boots. She’ll hear anything from miles away, she tells herself again. When she lays down, blinking her last at the sun, Michael coughs, pointedly.

“What,” she says. Now she’s down, sleep seems like a great idea.

“Are you just gonna leave me over here, lonely?” Michael says.

Selene refuses to move. “I’m comfortable now,” she says. She closes her eyes, and listens to Michael gather his own pallet and mutter under his breath.

“‘I’m comfortable,’” he says, high-pitched and mocking. “‘This leather catsuit makes a great pair of pajamas’. ‘I’m cold-blooded and don’t need warmth or company.’” He drags his things over the ground, obnoxious. “Well, I’m fucking cold,” he says in a normal register. He lays down next to her, and then proceeds to cover both of them with blankets, which shocks Selene’s eyes open. Michael’s looking at her while he tucks them underneath her chin.

“We have to rethink your leather,” he tells her, seriously. “It’s freezing.”

“I like it,” Selene says. She can feel her brow furrowing, as if without her permission. If Viktor could see her face now, what would he say? What would he see?

“I know you do,” Michael says. He kisses her forehead, as if to smooth it and the thoughts there, and puts his head down next to hers. He smiles more than he used to, when she met him. She wonders if she does the same. 

“We’ll discuss it more after sunset,” he says.

“What?” she says.

“Going home.”

///

They can’t go back, so they have to push forward, deeper into Russia. Michael stops complaining about the cold, but Selene makes sure to unroll her pallet next to his every day. They only realise they’ve crossed into Turkey when they see a road sign for the highway to Istanbul. They’d been staying off main roads, trekking through the woods, and hitching the odd lift. Selene had thrown on a heavy knitted shawl and a woollen dress over her suit, and spoke in guttural Russian, throwing around her lax Turkish vocabulary when she could.

When they pass their first gas station, Selene acts as lookout while Michael shatters the driver’s side window and steals them a car.

“Did you ever think this is where your life would end up?” Michael says when they’re on the road.

“I stopped asking myself that question a few hundred years ago,” Selene says. Her voice seems too loud in the small car. “I thought I was the daughter of a poor tradesman. I thought I was destined to a simple life, and it never occurred to me to mind. But even for me, the last few years have been a bit of a curveball,” she adds. 

“My dad was a high school football coach, and my mother was a math teacher,” Michael says. Selene is startled, somehow; she had never even wondered. He seemed to come into her life fully formed, as if he never existed before she saw him getting off the train. “They worked at the same school.”

A thought occurs to Selene; she feels sick. “Are they…”

“Still alive?” Michael’s eyes flick over to her. “No. My mom died, and that’s when I moved to Budapest. I had no idea where my life was heading, but I sure as hell I didn’t see you in it.”

Selene knows he had a fiance, once, who died. She’s never asked, and she never will. Instead, she puts her fingers over his, where they’re resting on the old-style stick shift, a long lever with a varnished wooden knob at the end. Her fingers fit neatly into the empty grooves between his, and she rubs his knuckles for a few seconds, until he turns his hand over and she interlocks her digits loosely with his. 

They stay like that until they hit the next village, and he has to let go to shift gears.

///

Lycans turn out to be not much trouble; they are scattered like wild animals, unorganised and feral in defeat. She hears them howl on the full moon, still. Their numbers are immeasurable, post Lucian and his crusade, and to think she once thought them almost extinct. They will come for her, again. But not now. 

There is a young vampire clan who controls the port town of Izmir. For a sweet, split second, Selene thinks she can pay them off and secret herself and Michael away on a cargo ship, but the leader is new and in want of an unforgettable victory. She sees an opportunity, now the three Elders are dead.

Selene has never had much time for those cursed with an entrepreneurial spirit. She relishes the fight, actually, after too much time running scared, hiding herself and Michael in the wilderness. Michael lets her do most of the work, just turns blue and snarls impressively, dealing only with those that come for him. He is beautiful in motion. He doesn’t enjoy it, though. Does that endear him to her more, or less?

He is, as always, introspective after it is all done. Violence hangs awkward on him, once he has changed back. The tips of his hair are soaked red, and blood drips from his blunt fingernails, making echoing sounds in the stone mansion, the pools beneath his feet growing ever-wider. 

“Kill or be killed, right?” he says.

///

From Izmir, they catch a ferry to Athens, then a cargo ship to Tunis. From there, they buy a farmer’s truck and drive overland. Selene spends the days in the grain container on the bed of the truck; the African sun is too much. They switch during the night, and Selene drives, and Michael keeps her company. 

The nights are warm, and clear, and she sees many new stars. She tells him a story, one night, of a legend from her homeland, of an evil spirit who birthed dragons. Her name feels heavy in Selene’s mouth, half-forgotten. She doesn’t know what has made her think of it.

“Bosh-sur-kanya,” Michael says.

“ _Boszorkány_ ,” Selene corrects.

“I feel like that’s what I said. And she was a witch?”

“Yeah. She comes after nightfall and curses the crops and cattle. She kills healthy men in their beds. Her son has seven heads.”

Michael whistles, lowly. 

“For the the first few days after I was turned, I thought she had possessed me.” Selene says, Then she stops, shocked at herself. A truck coming the opposite way on the highway illuminates them for a heartbeat of a moment, and she glances across to Michael. He is not looking at her, but is leaning against his palm, elbow propped up on the open window. He is gazing out at the passing trees, for which she is glad. 

“I was ravenous. I ate everything, and couldn’t stay awake during the day. Those I didn’t kill, I left bleeding in their homes. I thought she was using me to spread a plague, but I couldn’t stop. Viktor didn’t come for me until four nights later, when I had a pile of stinking bodies in a corner of my family home. ” She swallows. “He laughed, and embraced me, and told me what I was. He told me of the Lycans, and not to be scared. He helped me bury what was left of my family.”

“I’m sorry,” Michael says.

“It was a long time ago,” Selene says. She feels stupid for bringing it up.

“No, I’m sorry about Viktor. I know he meant a lot to you.”

“He was the only thing that meant anything to me,” Selene says. “Until you.”

It feels silly to say it out loud, but she’s glad she said it. She wants Michael to know. 

“I didn’t realise it but -” and here, Michael laughs, a rough, half-formed thing - “I was dead before I met you.” He looks across at her, finally. “Ironic, huh?”

“Gallows humor.” Selene lets her eyes be tugged from the road for an instant. Michael is not smiling, but his eyes dance at her. “You’ll fit right in.”

“Thanks,” Michael says. “It’s good to be part of the team.”

If feels like there’s a star sitting in Selene’s sternum, spitting sparks. She is alight for him at the oddest times. It’s just them two against the world, but she’s never felt less lonely in her long life. 

///

They cross into Morocco in the middle of the night, and arrive at Casablanca in the early morning, just as the sun is rising. It never really gets cold here, but what winter they have has just broken, and the mornings are fresh and cool, and Selene enjoys the sun while it’s still mild.

“So this is Casablanca,” Michael says. The tradespeople are setting up in the main square, and there’s so many things Selene is smelling that she has never smelled before. For the first time, she wishes she could eat human food.

“That’s a movie, right?” Selene says.

Michael smiles. “Yeah, that’s a movie.” He looks at her - fond, is the only way Selene could describe it. “We should watch it. You’d like it.”

“I would?” Selene can’t remember the last time she saw a movie. _Nosferatu_ , probably, and that’s only because she was on bodyguard detail for a Council member, and he thought it would be funny.

That night, they split up - her to do a patrol for Lycan or vampire activity, and him to barter passage out of Casablanca to Cuba. It is a long journey, almost a week, and ironically their best bet is a commercial cruise liner, as it holds enough people that they won’t either arouse suspicion or starve. It would have been better if Selene could use her connections to at least get them on the ship as guests, but she leaves it to Michael to find a dockworker who can secret them on board. 

They meet back at a agreed upon bar for dinner. Michael is already sitting at a table when she walks in, and says, “Of all the gin joints, in all the world, she walks into mine.”

Selene must look very nonplussed, because Michael outright laughs. “You’ll get it later.”

There is a movie theatre on board the cruise ship. They watch _Casablanca_ , which Selene does indeed like, although probably not to the extent Michael wishes she would. She struggles to sit still in the dark room, paying attention to the screen while she can hear the staff selling popcorn, the rotation of the giant propellers, the roar of the ship displacing water. Selene is very taken with this aspect of the human world, actually, the extravagance of it all. She watches the people go by with wide eyes, toting their books and beach bags and floppy straw hats, and their brightly colored drinks with the funny straws. Michael makes her take her catsuit off, and steals her a cheap purple sundress from one of the gift shops. They spend a lot of their time in the luggage rooms, but at night, Selene perches herself on one of the balconies, and the dress moves in the breeze. Michael holds her hand, sometimes.

“I didn’t know it could be like this,” she says, looking at him. 

“I’d forgotten,” he replies.

///

In Cuba, something changes. Neither of them have eaten their full for months, and Michael, especially, is looking starved. There is a coven on the island, one of the oldest, who have cut themselves entirely from the outside world. Selene has never talked to any of the Ciboney, but they have a reputation as being hermetic, self-sufficient, and hedonistic. 

Their stronghold is a network of caves, dug out of the Sierra Maestra, with no defenses except there is no hiding from the sun for miles and miles around. Six months ago, she could not have come here. She does not know how they defend themselves against Lycans. Are there any in Cuba? There must be. It is the nature of a Lycan to infect others. They are everywhere. 

Perhaps it is the war that is not.

She and Michael approach after dusk, during a party of some sort. There are roaring bonfires, and dancing, and...humans. Michael is as surprised as she is.

“Do you think they…” but he trails off in the middle of his question, seeing the answer. There is a human, seated deeply in a vampire’s lap. Her simple dress covers them, so Selene cannot see if they are joined, but the girl is undulating in the vampire’s lap as he bites her.

“I think they know,” Selene says, unnecessarily. “I have heard of this, but I never expected it to be so…”

Now Selene is the one left wordless, not quite sure how to continue. She didn’t expect it to be so...what? Confronting? Bestial? Arousing? 

They have lingered on the edge of the open clearing for too long, and they are noticed. An older woman comes up to them. She is wearing so many braided necklaces Selene cannot tell if she is wearing anything underneath. Her eyes are bright amber, and her skin glows with health. 

“I do hope you come in peace,” she says. “Or you picked the wrong night.”

“We have come for sanctuary,” Selene says, “if you will have us.”

“You are welcome to share our fire tonight,” the vampire says to them after a short pause, her bright eyes flicking between them. Her gaze is shrewd, and cutting, and Selene feels, suddenly, like there are no secrets from this woman. “We do not welcome strangers. Especially those who may bring trouble in their wake. Do not go into the _madrigueras_ , and you must leave as the moon. That is not a problem for you, I feel?”

“No. Your hospitality is appreciated,” Selene says.

“My name is Maricela. If you have anything to ask, I would appreciate you ask it of me.” 

Here, Michael clears his throat. “The, uh, humans. Are they here of their free will?”

Maricela’s sharp gaze turns to Michael. Michael tenses under Selene’s hand, where her fingers loop loosely around his wrist.

“We do not live as those of you from the _tierras grises_ , the Grey Lands. We share with our human neighbours, and they share with us. If they invite you to converse, or to sip of them, that is their choice and I will not intervene. Unless you cannot be trusted to control yourselves?”

Maricela is pointedly not looking away from Michael, Selene wonders if Michael feels the same as she does, that his mind is now not only his own. Michael seems nervous with her eyes on him, slipping his wrist from Selene’s grasp and shifting his weight from one foot to the other. 

“I will accept responsibility for him,” Selene says. 

“On both your heads be it,” she says. With that, she steps aside, and lets Selene and Michael take a seat by the fire. 

The clearing is manmade, with the trees cut so far back there is no danger of the fire moving to any overhead foliage. Everyone is sitting around the massive dug-out fire pit in various stages of undress. The humans all have large clay mugs with some sort of liquor, although Selene can safely say none of the dilated pupils seems to be from alcohol intoxication. They sit on the end of a log, next to a pretty, young human girl in a simple tank top and shorts, bronzed from the Cuban sun. She is in deep conversation with a vampire so old his skin hangs off his face like boiled cloth. He is animated, though, laughing at something the girl says in Spanish, jowls shaking. When Selene and Michael sit down, he gives them a suspicious look, but simply rises to join another couple when the young woman scoots across so she’s closer to Michael.

“Hello,” she says, with a wide, toothy grin. “ _¿Hablas español?_ “

Selene shakes her head, and Michael raises his hand, moving his fingers to show her the small gap between his thumb and index finger. 

“Ah, I should practice my English anyway.” Her English is much more accented than Maricela’s, but still clear. “My name is Lora, and this is my birthday party.”

Michael introduces himself and Selene. “And is this really your birthday?” he says. 

Selene can understand why he’d find it so hard to believe. She doesn’t think she’s ever talked to another human, socially.

“Yes of course!” Lora laughs.

“Happy birthday,” he says. When Selene says nothing, he elbows her in the side.

“Yes, happy birthday,” she adds.

When Lora laughs, her eyes crinkle in the corners, and she throws her head back, laughing with her whole body. She is an easy conversationalist, sharing personal information like it costs nothing. She tells them she goes to university on the other side of the island, at Santiago de Cuba, but has come back to spend her birthday with her family. It turns out Maricela is her godmother, which strikes Selene dumb, even though she leaves most of the talking to Michael. He can be charming if he wants to be. She’s watching it now, as Lora laughingly grabs Michael’s hand as he gestures, telling a wild tale of him and Selene coming across a bear in Georgia.

“I don’t believe you,” she says, still smiling. She has a quicksilver light within her, and a trickster’s wit, and Selene has known others like her and been envious of every single one.

“I’m telling the truth! Isn’t that right, Selene,” Michael says. 

Selene nods.

“She doesn’t talk much,” Lora says, whispering to Michael like they are conspiring lovers. They’re both looking at her with cheshire grins.

“She’s the strong, silent type,” Michael says. Selene narrows her eyes, unsure if she is the brunt of the joke, or being included in it. “And I wouldn’t say we get out much.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re here with us tonight,” Lora says, reaching over Michael to pat Selene’s knee. The touch is so warm it sends a bolt through Selene. Even after Lora turns back to Michael, it throbs like a brand on her skin.

“Would you like to share me tonight?” Lora says. “It would be my honor to have our two guests.” She leans close, whispering again, this time including Selene in the intimate little scene. Selene is drawn close, as if magnetized by Lora’s impish charisma. Her thigh is pressed tightly against Michael’s thigh, his other knee knocking against Lora’s. “We haven’t had any new blood, so to speak, for many years.”

If Selene’s heart could beat, it would be batting against the inside of her ribcage. Her tongue feels too large for her mouth; she knows her eyes have gone electric, her sharp teeth catch against her lip.

“We can’t,” Selene says, although everything in her rebels. She will subdue Michael and leave, if she has to, if the temptation proves too much for him. For her, even.

“Well,” Michael says, softly. “You can.”

She’s never found the dead silence of her heart so loud. Across from her, Lora’s heartbeat is thundering, she has started sweating, her quickening chest rising and falling, but Lora’s eyes meet hers steadily. Michael is looking at her, too. He does not seem to be as torn about this as she is; she made Maricela promises, thinking she would have to keep Michael from losing control, and here she is, feeling like she is barely a hundred again.

“Michael does not feed as I do,” she whispers. Her voice is hoarse. “Does you offer extend to me, alone?”

“Are you not _vampiro_?” Lora says to Michael, looking confused.

“Not quite,” Michael says. His teeth are more of a blunt instrument than Selene’s, unsuitable for gentler work.

“Then know my offer would extend to you, Selene, but I don’t think it’s necessary to exclude anyone. Will you both share in the heat of the fire with me?”

Selene nods jerkily. She had never felt nervousness before Michael. Maybe this is how it feels to be alive.

Lora takes their hands. Heeding Maricela’s warnings, they do not go into the cave dwellings, but into one of the temporary huts that dot the tree line. They are short, but wide in circumference; Selene’s head brushes the thatched roof, but when Lora pulls them both to the ground, they can lay out comfortably. The light from the fire can still reach them, and it catches on the shining sweat of Lora’s temple, the compulsive swallow of Michael’s throat. 

“Have you not done this before?” Lora says, climbing into Selene’s lap. Selene can’t help but fall backward so she is leaning against Michael’s front.

Not consensually, is what Selene does not say. She and Michael have been feeding off drunkards and livestock since they ran out of the blood bags they were able to steal from old safehouses. 

“We do not share this custom in the, uh, Grey Lands,” is what actually comes out of her mouth. In fact, with their obsession with blood purity, humans were seen as unclean. The coven’s blood came from what was practically a production line, bottled and cleansed of impurities. Selene has a suspicion humans were kept as pets, letting them heal only to tap them again. She feels a lick of shame, now. She had never cared in her previous life.

“We’ll take it slow to start with, okay?” Lora says. She rubs her hands long Selene’s bare thighs like she is calming a skittish animal. Selene misses her catsuit, suddenly feeling like she needs an extra layer between her and this little jackal. Her leathers sit in a backpack by the fire, with her guns and grenades and UV rounds.

When Selene nods, Lora offers her wrist, under-side up, to Selene, and Selene intertwines their fingers with one hand, and brings Lora’s wrist closer with the other. She is a furnace against Selene, and the closer Selene gets to her wrist, the more she smells like a fire in the rainforest.

The first bite shocks Selene so badly she barely has a taste before she rears back. The nick to Lora’s skin is small, nothing that couldn’t be covered by a plaster, but only a couple of drops make it to Selene’s tongue and the rest fall to the floor, wasted.

Lora gasps, and Selene cannot look away from her while her mouth burns. She can feel the blood moving from her mouth, down her throat, into her chest. It lights something in her, something she’d forgotten she could have. It halfway _hurts_ , like swallowing a match, but already she craves it again.

“Selene,” Michael says, urgently.

“Michael, it’s…” she trails off. What could she possibly say? She brings Lora’s wrist up again, and licks the blood welling from the cut. Turning her head, she cradles Michael’s neck with the hand not intertwined with Lora’s, and brings his face to hers.

When Michael kisses her, she can feel his shudder beneath her hand. And when they part, his eyes are black, and the inside ring of his lips are red.

“Again,” he says.

This time, she clutches Lora close, roughly pulling her into her arms. Lora grunts, delighted at the press of their breasts, rubbing together. Selene gathers Lora’s dark hair and holds it away from her neck. 

“Is this...okay?” Selene asks for the last time. 

Lora’s pupils are blown wide. She nods.

Selene bites away from the carotid artery, just where her shoulder starts giving way to the fleshiness of her neck. Her teeth just pierce the skin, and suddenly, her mouth can’t hold it all. Behind her, Michael moans to see it run down the sides of her face.

She is grasping for him before she even turns. This time, he attacks her, holding her head tightly between his open palms, keeping her attached to him as he explores her mouth. His teeth are elongated and canine; they tear her bottom lip.

“Oh,” Lora says, from far away. When Selene tears herself away, Michael is panting - almost _heaving_ \- and Lora is clearly hypnotised. There is a smeared wound on her shoulder, and it bleeds sluggishly but steadily; bad enough to hurt, and bad enough to titillate.

Selene has had enough to fill her now, but certainly not Michael, and she is _greedy_.

///

They leave well before sunrise, not wanting to wear out Maricela’s tentative welcome. 

The little trickster, they leave euphoric on the floor of the hut. “Happy birthday to me,” she says drowsily, pulling Selene and Michael to her in turns so she can kiss them each on the mouth.

Selene whispers a blessing to her in the old tongue, pulling the straps of her tank top back up to her shoulders. The neck of it is stained with blood. Not all of it is Lora’s.

“Go, otherwise I’ll never get any sleep,” she laughs. 

“Goodbye, _pequeño tesoro_ ,” Michael says, and Lora groans.

“Your accident is so bad I don’t even know what that was, but _leave me in peace_ , please, I beg you.”

Michael laughs, and they duck their heads on the way out of the hut. 

They are over an hour away from the camp, the horizon starting to turn pink, when Michael says, sounding wrecked, “ _Selene_.”

She is on him before the last syllable leaves his mouth. She slams him so hard against a tree a branch above them cracks and falls. The good thing about a dress is she doesn’t have to take all her clothes off to ride him; he falls to his knees first, taking off her underwear with so little finesse he leaves scores down her thighs. Then she just pushes him backward and climbs on top, although she has to slap his hands away from the fastenings on his jeans because the both of them trying to do it gets them nowhere. 

She wonders how long he’s been walking with this hard-on. Since they left the hut? Or has he been teasing himself, thinking about this since last night?

They don’t do this very often, it’s hard to feel safe enough, private enough, or to steal enough time to carve out something for themselves. Michael’s kisses are humid and heavy, equal to the sun rising at her back. She cannot get enough, not with the borrowed blood pounding through her. She throbs in time with her harsh breaths. 

Their kiss breaks when she rocks down on him, flimsy little dress rucked up about her waist. Michael’s eyes are wild, one hand tangled in her hair, one hand pressing the small of her back, both of them keeping her close, pressing her down onto him just as hard as she likes.

They fuck a little like they fight - with absolutely no idea what they’re doing, but with absolute certainty they should be doing it together. She makes him come first, because that’s the way she likes it, being in control of this bucking and howling creature beneath her. Then he makes her come second, and third, eating her out until she beats on his shoulders with her fists, her thighs like jelly, tremors rocking her so hard she doesn’t know if she likes it. Michael flops off her, and when she looks down at him, he’s radiating cheshire smugness. His face is an absolute mess - that, she likes, even more than the wide open grin underneath her own slick. She can’t help but smile back, like a fool, when Michael starts laughing.

“You’re blood-drunk,” she says.

Michael stops laughing. “I guess I must be,” he says. He reaches up to touch Selene’s mouth, where a hint of her smile still lingers. “It’ll be getting hot soon,” he says. He’s up and moving before Selene feels like she’s ready, finding her underwear and tossing it in her lap. When she gets up, her legs quiver, like they wouldn’t do even if she ran the length of fifty football fields.

“Come on,” Michael says, walking away with his pack already shouldered. “Maricela told me where to get passports in Havana.”

“Hey,” Selene says, grabbing his arm and forcibly turning him toward her. He wiped his face when she wasn’t looking, and his color has returned to normal - not as pale as her, but much paler than he was when they met.

“We’ve come so far,” she says. 

“You got us this far,” she says, because it’s true.

“We’re almost there,” she says.

///

The airport is small, regional, so when they step out of the plane, they step out onto the tarmac, in the blinding midday sun.

“We’re home,” Michael says, backlit and golden.


End file.
